Читать книгу Small Teaching - James M. Lang - Страница 16

Even without formal testing or the use of clickers, you can always ask students to make informal, in-class predictions about any course material to which they are about to be exposed. This could happen in almost any discipline, in any type of class. Scientists know full well how prediction plays a role in the scientific method—in the form of the hypothesis—and likely already ask students to engage in predictive activities in their use of laboratory experiments and reports. But outside of the laboratory, and in other disciplines, instructors can still follow this same basic approach. Get into the habit of asking students to make predictions about new content based on their knowledge from earlier in the semester, from their previous courses, or from their own general knowledge. How Learning Works gaves two quick examples of this: “Before asking students to read an article from the 1970s, you might ask them what was going on historically at the time that might have informed the author's perspective. Or when presenting students with a design problem, you might ask them how a famous designer, whose work they know, might have approached the problem.” In these kinds of questions, again, you are requiring students “not only to draw on prior knowledge but also to use it to reason about new knowledge” (Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, and Norman 2010, p. 33). Ideally, you will both ask for the prediction and give them the opportunity to explain why they made it; doing so will require them to examine their thinking and might help them recognize their knowledge and skill gaps. Even more ideally, after you give them the answer you might ask them to explain why their predictions did or did not hold true.

Earlier in this chapter, I described for you three experiments on learning designed to demonstrate the power of predictions. Imagine that I was describing those experiments for students in a psychology or education course. I describe the setup of the first experiment—with one group of students trying to memorize the word pairs for 13 seconds, and a second group making their guess and then seeing the correct answer for five seconds—and then stop and ask the students to predict the results. I could do this in a generic way, and just invite some students to raise their hands and speculate, or I could offer specific options and invite students to select the one they think would be correct:

 Memorizers performed 50% better on the test.

 Memorizers performed 10% better on the test.

 The two groups performed about equally.

 Predicters performed 10% better on the test.

 Predicters performed 50% better on the test.

(If all is going well in this chapter, you will remember that the answer is number four.) Students could select the answer they think was correct using polling or simply by raising their hands. After I record the student votes, I might invite a few students to explain their answers, and then show the results. After those results have been revealed, I can use them to make the two points that matter the most: prediction enhanced learning, and it did so by a small but significant margin. Once students have seen the results of this initial experiment, the next two experiments I tell them about will help confirm the knowledge that they have now lodged more firmly in their brains.

If your teaching routine includes describing surveys or experiments for your students, consider varying the typical pattern of describing the setup and then showing the results. Instead describe the setup and ask students to predict the results. After you have shown them the results, invite them to reflect upon the accuracy or inaccuracy of their predictions: Why did they get it wrong or right? What did they learn when the results were revealed?